With most of the workforce working from home, video-conferencing platforms have become important for virtual meetings, webinars, and press web-conferences. While video conferencing solutions by traditional tech players such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Google have been gaining traction, Zoom has emerged out of nowhere to capture a significant market share primarily due to the ease of using the platform. However, Zoom has also been at the centre of hacking and privacy issues even as it registered over 300 million daily users in April, over 50 per cent growth from the previous month. Zoom has now launched version 5.0 as part of its 90-day plan to fix security gaps. BusinessLine spoke to Abe Smith, International Head at Zoom to understand the company’s strategy in light of the pandemic with a focus on improving security and its interest in the Indian market.

Zoom has been in business for 9 years. Why has it taken a pandemic to realise how weak your platform is in terms of security ?

Zoom has been in the enterprise space for nine years. However, it had only been used by enterprise clients initially who had done security reviews of our user, network, and data centre layers. However, owing to the current crisis, the usage grew tremendously. We had 300 million users use our solution in a day. Most of them were individual users in unexpected ways. That is when we started noticing these issues and challenges that had to be addressed as we scale up the product.

Related Stories
Are we already tired of Zoom meetings?
Video chat has been a godsend in this time of social distancing, but with back-to-back online meetings, we have just about had too much of a good thing
 

How do you keep a balance between keeping communications secure and keeping the platform user friendly?

Enhancing security and user privacy is our top priority at the moment. We’ve added multiple security features in the latest Zoom 5.0. However, it will not impact the overall user experience and the quality of the product. It will indeed become a bit more complicated from the user end as users will have to proactively switch on security feature, lock meetings and use features such as meeting partners. But that is what is necessary for safer user experience.

Related Stories
As security chinks trigger concerns, Zoom gets down to build trust
Deploys intelligence firms to sniff out password dumps in Dark Web
 

How big is the Indian market for you currently both in terms of user base and revenue? Could you share some details on how you plan to grow in this market?

We saw enormous potential for India and the company as a whole has always been excited about the opportunity. In India, people are starting to use the product on a free account level. Interest was growing rather precipitously before we even entered the market with an official office or a launch or legal entity. So we have a legal entity now and an office here. We see a very broad and large opportunity, and that ranges from small businesses, SMB, to mid-market, all the way up to enterprises, higher educational institutions and government organizations. We're appreciative of the fact that the government is open and willing to talk to us we’re excited about the fact that there's a broader awareness about Zoom.

The COVID-19 with a lockdown in India has forced people to think about ways to use the service, whether it's for education, or business continuity, or political occasions and connection inside and outside of India, or multinationals connecting with their employees in India. All of those became much more urgent during the COVID-19. It helps get people probably more quickly accustomed to Zoom. And as a result, I think that means it's the right time for us to continue to lean in.

The Ministry of Home Affairs in India has put out an advisory against Zoom? Are you engaging with the Indian government and what are you telling them?

Yes, we are aware there were certain issues. We had seen the advisory and had responded to them in order to maintain complete transparency. We want to be active for the Ministry of Home Affairs and our response, but I think it's a collaboration, and it's an ongoing dialogue. And whether that's discussion around cybersecurity or that's a discussion around the Ministry of Education, how we work in education, which is really important.

Two out of our 17 global data centres are in India, in Mumbai and Hyderabad. So, it’s a commitment to infrastructure and to the vision that we see for growth in the market, both for Indian national companies and multinationals that want to join the service.

Will Zoom be focusing on end-to-end encryption?

The industry has a very loose definition of end-to-end encryption. We actually think we want to get permission. Zoom 5.0 talks about AES 256-bit GCM encryption, which is a higher level of standard, struggle level posts are in transit and resistance, service of data. Another area that I think is confusing people is that our business model is really built around servicing customers that often use it for business purposes. It's prior to the application. So I think all of those things combined actually say there's a chance to raise the level of what the highest quality, service security and privacy looks like. These definitions need to be tighter.

Zoombombing has become one of the most concerning security issues with hackers disrupting important meetings and online classes. How are you addressing this?

We don't condone this. We find these kinds of situations often, especially during a time of need. So I really think what is the simplest way to prevent meeting disruptions is to use simple user security, it really boils down to that. And the more people that understand the idea of using simple security techniques, like, passwords, waiting rooms, locking meetings, ejecting people from the session, the outcome would be much, much better in terms of reducing or hopefully eliminating 100 per cent any of these kinds of issues.

How have Alex Stamos and the CISO Council contributed to Zoom’s security infrastructure so far?

Alex Stamos is has been on as an advisor independent of the CISO Council. The CISO Council will meet and they'll work with his team separately and practice policy programs together with Eric. CISO has been extremely provocative in providing suggestions and frankly, resources to help us.

There have been criticisms regarding Zoom’s heavy reliance on China-based engineering and its operations in China from a data privacy perspective. Can you weigh in on that?

There are users in China who want to use the product, and we've established one data centre that serves the country of China, Mainland China itself. And that is geo-fenced. So it always has. The 5.0 release, gives users the opportunity to choose their data centre. For Indian users, that means selecting either Mumbai or Hyderabad data centres in default, that would give them the highest level performance and also a sense of security. We have not connected, nor do we connect them into the data centre in China.

What will be Zoom’s focus after the 90-day plan? Will you be refocusing on building new features and solutions?

We're in a global crisis and a pandemic. So our intention is to ensure that businesses continue to work, the economy goes forward and they stay connected. Education for students around the world primary is a priority right now. So is helping governments continue to communicate because they have to address what happens during COVID. And what happens after that.

There's a consistency that we want to continue to advance our products. But right now we've got to stay 100 per cent focused on the crisis set here, ensuring that we keep the world connected and communicating in a safe and secure way, which is why we're dedicated to the 90-day plan.

With the opportunity around, many new startups are beginning to enter video-conferencing space. They could replicate or even better your product. The Indian government has announced a video development challenge. Is this a cause of worry for you?

Video conferencing market and the market for Unified Communications is massive. And there's plenty of room for everyone. We look inward first. So, for us, it's about creating the absolute best product in the market and continuing to innovate on that product and do it in a way that offers as we mentioned before, the highest level security Our focus is to be 100 per cent committed as a video first quality company.

How do you see the future of work and the business opportunity for Zoom after COVID-19 subsides?

The COVID-19 experience has created an awareness for people. And in some ways, it’s been a forced situation due to social distancing. People are working from home. Students and children need to learn from home. We're seeing meetings that are happening from government officials’ house versus necessarily their, their governmental office. I think that it's made them aware that it's not as hard as it looks.

It's going to create more consideration for what's possible and people will realize a change because of this, a change in mentality. Our hope is that we can be a part of this transition. In the future for convenience or for access, I think people will start to think about alternatives.

 

comment COMMENT NOW